There is to be a global trial of IPv6 on 8 June, World IPv6 Day, Google, Facebook, Akamai and Yahoo have committed to taking part in the test.
“The good news is that internet users don’t need to do anything special to prepare for World IPv6 Day,” said Lorenzo Colitti, a network engineer at Google in a blog post.
On World IPv6 Day, we’ll be taking the next big step. Together with major web companies such as Facebook and Yahoo!, we will enable IPv6 on our main websites for 24 hours. This is a crucial phase in the transition, because while IPv6 is widely deployed in many networks, it’s never been used at such a large scale before. We hope that by working together with a common focus, we can help the industry prepare for the new protocol, find and resolve any unexpected issues, and pave the way for global deployment.
Net firms are being encouraged to switch to IPv6 as addresses in the old scheme will run out by November 2011.
The World IPv6 Day is being co-ordinated by the Internet Society, a non-profit group which educates people and companies about net issues. It has provided a webpage through which people can test their Ipv6 readiness.
Test your IPv6 connectivity at: http://test-ipv6.com/